You don’t have to be an expert in technology to realize that the computers are already out of fashion. They are used by so many people, and they are really accessible to almost anyone, so today it is not such a big deal to have a computer. But there is a new category of devices that are more and more demanded by customers, and these are the laptops (also known as notebooks). These devices have all of the components of a computer, only that all of them are integrated into a single unit. And this is quite lightweight either, so a laptop is really portable and can be used in so many other places, and not just at home or at the office like it’s the case for a PC.

It is true that the laptops are cheaper these days than they were a few years ago, but still they are more expensive than desktop computers. The cheapest ones cost around 500 dollars, but to have a really good laptop you will need to pay 1,000 dollars or even more. But in case you don’t have these kind of money, but you still really want a laptop, there is a solution for you too. And here we are referring to the netbooks which are the best affordable laptops on the market. A netbook looks and works just like a regular laptop, only that it is much smaller. While a laptop has the size of the screen of 14 inch or more, a netbook has a size of the screen of 12 inch or less. So this means that the entire device is really small and lightweight so it can be used practically anywhere. A netbook doesn’t have the screen or the features needed for advanced computer tasks, and this is why it can be used for simple activities, such as writing documents, mails or browsing the internet. There are many models of netbooks on the market, made by different producers.

One of the cheapest is the eMachines netbook EM 250 – 1915, that has a price of just 229 dollars, but since we don’t know so much about this company, we’ll discuss about a model made by a more famous producer – Asus. And from this company we’ll choose the Asus – Eee PC Netbook with Intel ® Atom ™ Processor – Black, Model: 1005 HAB-RBLK 003 X which costs 279 dollars. So this is still a very small and accessible price.

As we already said, you won’t get very powerful features for these money, but the ones you get are quite enough for the simple activities we mentioned before, and of course some others too. And now here are the complete specifications for this netbook:

Warranty Terms – Parts 1 year

Warranty Terms – Labor 1 year limited

Product Height: 1.4 ”

Product Width: 10.3 “

Product Weight: 2.2 lbs.

Product Depth: 7 “

Color Category: Black

Processor Brand: Intel ®

Processor: Intel ® Atom ™

Processor Speed: 1.6 GHz

Battery Type: 3 cell lithium-ion

Display Type: WXGA widescreen LED (1024 x 600)

Screen Size (Measured Diagonally): 10.1 “

System Bus: 533 MHz

Cache Memory: 512 KB on die Level 2

System Memory (RAM): 1 GB

System Memory (RAM): Expandable To 2 GB

Type of Memory (RAM): DDR 2

Hard Drive Type: SATA (5400 rpm)

Computer Hard Drive Size: 160 GB

Optical Drive: Not included

Digital Media Reader or Slots Yes, digital media card reader

Graphics: Intel ® UMA

Video Memory: 224 MB (shared)

TV Tuner: No

MPEG: No

Built in Webcam: Yes

Modem: None

Networking Built-in 10/ 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet LAN (RJ 45 connector)

Wireless Networking Wireless- B+G+N

Bluetooth-Enabled: No

S-Video Outputs: None

Speakers: Internal

PCMCIA Slots: None

USB 2.0 Ports 3

IEEE 1394 FireWire Ports None

Parallel Ports: None

Game Ports: None

Laptop Weight Ultraportable (5.5 lbs. or less)

Battery Life: Up to 3 hours and 48 minutes

Pointing Device: Wide type multitouchpad

HDMI Output: No

Blu-ray Player: No

Operating System: Windows XP Home SP 3

Included Software Adobe Acrobat Reader; Microsoft Works and more

ENERGY STAR Qualified: Yes

BBY Software Installer: No

So after all this is a really small and really cheap laptop, that is not recommended for gamers or graphic designers, but which offers the basic features needed for a normal person, that likes to browse the internet from anywhere he goes and who is not interested in anything too fancy or too powerful.

In the previous article we talked about the netbooks, laptops that usually have a display screen of 10 inch. For this article we’ll get back to the bigger notebooks, but not to the biggest ones…we’ll talk about a laptop that has a 14 inch display screen. So this is not such a big one, but it is not small either. So this size can be the perfect one to offer both a small and portable laptop and a good video quality for High Definition movies and video games. Since there are so many places from where you can buy a laptop, there are also many places from where you can get a 14 inch laptop.

A good place where you can find some of the best deals on 14 inch laptops is the site bestbuy.com. This is the site of a major retail store from the United States of America (and other countries too), store that is specialized in selling all sorts of electronic devices. So in case you are living in the United States, you can just visit the site and buy a product directly from the internet. First go at the “Computers” category and then choose “laptops”. Here you can choose the laptop you want on different criteria, and one of them is the size of the screen. So just go at “14 inch and under” and here you will find many different models to choose from. And for today we’ll discuss more about one of them, the Toshiba – Satellite Laptop with Intel ® Pentium ® Processor – Gold Onyx, Model: M 505-S 4975. It is not such an expensive laptop, and has a price of 569 dollars. And for these money it offers quite really good features, that can be compared to much more expensive laptops.

The first thing you will notice about this laptop is its design. It is not colored all in black like most of the notebooks, but it has some interesting yellow stripes on it, that are making it look a little more interesting. The display screen has… as we said 14 inch and it is a TFT LCD High Definition widescreen display, that offers a resolution of 1366 x 768. So the video quality is quite nice, good enough for watching movies at a great quality, or playing video games. The processor is a Intel Pentium, while the RAM memory offers 4 GB of DDR 2 memory. So you can handle any kind of computer activity, and even do more at the same time. It also has wireless capabilities, and it comes with an installed version of the Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition 64 bit operating system. And here are the complete technical details for the Toshiba Satellite M 505 – S 4975:

-Warranty Terms – Parts 1 year limited
-Warranty Terms – Labor 1 year limited
-Product Height 1.6 ”
-Product Width 13.5 ”
-Product Weight 5.2 lbs.
-Product Depth 9.1 ”
-Color Category Black
-Processor Brand Intel ®
-Processor Intel ® Pentium ®
-Processor Speed 2.1GHz
-Battery Type 6 cell lithium-ion
-Display Type TruBrite LED backlit widescreen display (1366 x 768)
-Screen Size (Measured Diagonally) 14 ”
-System Bus 800 MHz
-Cache Memory 1 MB on die Level 2
-System Memory (RAM) 4 GB
-Type of Memory (RAM) DDR 2
-Hard Drive Type SATA (5400 rpm)
-Computer Hard Drive Size 320 GB
-Optical Drive Double-layer DVD±RW/CD-RW
-Optical Drive Speeds 6 x DVD+ R DL; 6 x DVD- R DL; 8 x 8 x 8 DVD+ RW; 8 x 6 x 8 DVD- RW; 24 x 24 x 24 CD-RW
-Direct-Disc Labeling Yes
-Digital Media Reader or Slots Yes, digital media card reader
-Graphics Intel ® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500 M
-Video Memory Up to 1759 MB total graphics memory
-TV Tuner No
-MPEG Yes
-Built-in Webcam Yes
-Modem None
-Networking 10/ 100 Ethernet LAN (RJ 45 connector)
-Wireless Networking Wireless- B+G+N
-Bluetooth-Enabled No
-S-Video Outputs None
-Speakers Internal
-PCMCIA Slots None
-USB 2.0 Ports 3
-IEEE 1394 FireWire Ports None
-Parallel Ports None
-Game Ports None
-Laptop Weight Ultraportable (5.5 lbs. or less)
-Battery Life Up to 4 hours
-Pointing Device Multitouch TouchPad with on/off button
-HDMI Output No
-Blu-ray Player No
-Operating System Platform Windows
-Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
-Included Software Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 (full version); Adobe Acrobat Reader; Corel DVD MovieFactory, -Norton AntiVirus 2.0 (15 months) and more
-ENERGY STAR Qualified Yes

There are so many producers of notebooks, and they are all offering so many different models, so it is really hard to tell which is the best laptop on the market. But what we can tell you are the names of the best companies that are making laptops, and also the features needed for a laptop to be really good. First of all here the names of the best notebook producers in the world: Hewlett Packard, Asus, Dell, Acer, Toshiba, Lenovo, Sony and Apple. Besides these there are also some other companies such as Gateway, Alienware, MSI, Fujitsu, Samsung, and they are also offering some nice laptops.

For a laptop to be really good, first of all it needs to be portable. But most of the laptops today, no matter their size of the display screen, are quite thin and lightweight so they are portable. We can’t say for sure which is the best size of the screen, because it depends on the preferences of each user. Some users prefer a larger screen to be able to watch movies and do other activities at a good video quality, while others prefer a laptop with a smaller screen. Since it has a small display, it means that the entire laptop is smaller, so it is even more portable. But the most important features are the technical details for each laptop. First of all a good laptop will need to have a powerful processor ( a dual core processor with a speed of 2 Ghz or more), along with a good RAM memory (at least 4 GB).

This way you will be able to do any kind of computer activity, and even do more at the same time. To be able to store all your files you will also need a big hard disk, and one that can be quite enough for most of the users will need to offer around 500 GB. But maybe you will want to store some information on CD-s and DVD-s too, so your laptop would also need a good optical drive. The latest in this domain is the Blu ray disc drive, so try to find a laptop that has this feature. To be able to enjoy a good video experience, the display screen is not enough, and you will also need a powerful graphics engine. And besides all of these features, a good laptop will also need a good battery life, both Ethernet and wireless connectivity, a webcam and microphone, a media card reader and also an included installed operating system. Today we’ll discuss about a good laptop that offers all of the features mentioned above, and this is the Sony – VAIO Laptop with Intel® Core ™ I 5 Processor – Jet Black, Model: VPCCW 27 FX/B. This one comes at a price of 979 dollars, which of course is a little expensive, but for these money you will get all the features you might need.

So now here are the complete technical details for this laptop, and this way you can understand better all that it has to offer:

-Warranty Terms – Parts 1 year limited
-Warranty Terms – Labor 1 year limited
-Product Height 1.5 ”
-Product Width 13.4 ”
-Product Weight 5.3 lbs.
-Product Depth 9.2 ”
-Color Category Black
-Processor Brand Intel ®
-Processor Intel® Core ™ I 5
-Processor Speed 2.4 GHz (with Turbo Boost up to 2.93 GHz )
-Battery Type 6 cell lithium-ion
-Display Type Widescreen backlit LED (1600 x 900)
-Screen Size (Measured Diagonally) 14 ”
-Cache Memory 3 MB on die Level 3
-System Memory (RAM) 4 GB
-System Memory (RAM) Expandable To 8 GB
-Type of Memory (RAM) DDR 3
-Hard Drive Type SATA (5400 rpm)
-Computer Hard Drive Size 500 GB
-Optical Drive Double-layer DVD ± RW/ Blu-ray Disc/ CD-RW
-Optical Drive Speeds Drive speeds not specified
-Direct-Disc Labeling No
-Digital Media Reader or Slots Yes, digital media card reader
-Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 330 M GPU
-Video Memory 512 MB (dedicated); 2263 MB total available
-TV Tuner No
-MPEG Yes
-Built-in Webcam Yes
-Modem None
-Networking Built-in 10 Base-T/ 100 Base-TX / 1000 Base-T Fast Ethernet (RJ 45 connector)
-Wireless Networking Wireless- B+G+N
-Bluetooth-Enabled Yes
-S-Video Outputs None
-Additional Audio/Video Connectors HDMI
-Audio Intel ® High Definition Audio support
-PCMCIA Slots 1 ExpressCard/34
-USB 2.0 Ports 3
-IEEE 1394 FireWire Ports 1
-Parallel Ports None
-Game Ports None
-Laptop Weight Ultraportable (5.5 lbs. or less)
-Battery Life Up to 3 hours and 30 minutes
-Pointing Device Multifinger electrostatic touchpad
-HDMI Output Yes
-Blu-ray Player Yes
-Operating System Platform Windows
-Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
-Included Software Microsoft Works SE 9.0; Sony Creativity Suite and more
-ENERGY STAR Qualified Yes
-BBY Software Installer No
-Graphics Chip NVIDIA

In some of the previous articles we talked about the best day to buy a laptop computer (in case you are living in the United States of America) – and this was the Black Friday, a really special day for both retail stores and customers. This is the day when retailers begin to make huge profits because of the opening for the Christmas shopping season and also the day when customers can make really good deals and buy really cheap products. And since both the stores and the customers want to make really good deals for as long as possible, the stores usually maintain the offers through the whole weekend following the Black Friday, and even in the next Monday. And this day is known as the Cyber  Monday. This term was introducer by the National Retail Federation in 2005 when they had launch the site cybermonday.com. Here on this site you can find so many special offers for all sorts of products, such as: electronic devices, computers, jewelry, CD-s, clothes toys and many more others. Since the name is “cyber” Monday, this means that most of the offers are made online on all sorts of site, and not in the physical stores like in the Black Friday. But of course there are also many online offers in the Black Friday and also offers in real stores in the Cyber Monday.

The Cyber Monday can’t be compared to the Black Friday in terms of income, but it still makes a lot more income compared to a normal day. For example the biggest online income made in the Black Friday was in 2007 and had 41 billion dollars, while the biggest income for the Cyber Monday was made in the same year but with a sum of 881 million dollars. So now let’s get back to the products that are interesting us the most – the laptops. Since there are many good offers in all kinds of electronic products, of course there are some for laptops too. And here are just some examples of discounts made for notebooks in the previous years:

- Wal Mart had the Acer Aspire 3000 notebook for $598 online with these technical details

* 15.4″ XGA Crystal Bright screen

* 1.80 GHz Mobile AMD Sempron 3000+

* Windows XP Home Edition

* Memory: 512 MB (256 MB/x 2 installed), Max (2 GB)

* Hard Drive: 40 GB ATA/ 100 hard disk drive

* CD-RW/ DVD optical drive

- Amazon had the Apple iBook Notebook M 9846 LL/ A w/ Power PC G 4 1.33 GHz, 12.1 in TFT, 512 MB, 40 GB, DVD / CDRW Combo, Built-in AirPort Extreme, Mac OS X Tiger for $1000 – $100 rebate = $ 900 w/ free shipping

-         HP offered free shipping + a free printer after rebate + $ 50 rebate on a Customizable HP Pavilion dv 8000 z Notebook (17 inch screen AMD Turion notebook)

-         Amazon.com had the Sony VAIO VGN-FS 742/ W Notebook w/ Pentium M 740 1.73 GHz, 15.4-inch WXGA, 512 MB, 80 GB, DVD+-RW DL, 802.11 b/ g, XP Home $1299 – $100 Sony rebate – $150 Amazon rebate  = $1049 w/ free shipping.

So here were just some examples, and of course there are so many more others. And usually the best offers are found on the official sites of the laptop producers, and also on other sites such as: bestbuy.com, tigerdirect.com, amazon.com, ebay.com etc. So when the Cyber Monday approaches (which is the first Monday after the Black Friday – which is also the first Friday after Thanksgiving Day) , be sure to check out these sites and be the first to buy a laptop at a really good price. Good luck!

There are many sources from where you can buy laptops beginning from the classic local retail stores from your city to the huge network which is the internet. A store that sells laptops both in retail stores and on the internet (on its official website) is Best Buy.

This is a big retail store from the United States of America that is specialized in selling all types of consumer electronic products. The store had such a big success in the US, that it also expanded in other countries such as: Canada, Mexico, China and Turkey. It was initially launched in 1966 with the name Sound of Music, and it changed its name into Best Buy in 1983. It sells millions of products each year, and in 2008 it had a revenue of 45 billion dollars.

So for today we’ll discuss about a Best Buy laptop computer, and for today we’ll choose to talk about an ultra thin laptop.  A laptop from this category usually doesn’t have an optical drive (to reduce weight and thickness), it has a longer battery life to offer you as many time as possible unplugged and besides this it also has a low voltage processor (in some models) to offer you lower power consumption…so more time on the go, without needing a power source. You can find 5 ultra thin laptops on the site of Best Buy, 2 from Toshiba, one from Lenovo, one from Asus and also one from Alienware. And for today we’ll talk about the Toshiba – Satellite Laptop with AMD Turion ™ Neo X 2 Dual-Core Mobile Processor – Nova Black, Model: T 135 D-S 1324. this laptop comes at a price of 629 dollars and for this money you will get quite good features.

As you can notice it is really thin and has a thickness of 1.4 inch and a weight of 3.9 lbs. Its screen has a size of 13.3 inch, and it is a widescreen LED backlit LCD display. So the video quality will be quite nice. The dual core AMD Turion processor, combined with the RAM memory of 4 GB will offer you really good performances, for any kind of computer activity. And as we mentioned before, this model also offers a long battery life of up to 6 hours. To understand better the features offered by this model, here are its complete technical details:

-Warranty Terms – Parts 1 year limited
-Warranty Terms – Labor 1 year limited
-Product Height 1.4 ”
-Product Width 12.7 ”
-Product Weight 3.9 lbs.
-Product Depth 8.8 ”
-Color Category Black
-Processor Brand AMD
-Processor Platform VISION Technology by AMD
-Processor AMD Turion™ Neo X 2
-Processor Speed 1.6 GHz
-Battery Type 6 cell lithium-ion
-Display Type High-definition widescreen LED backlit TFT LCD with TruBrite technology (1366 x 768)
-Screen Size (Measured Diagonally) 13.3 ”
-Cache Memory 1 MB on die Level 2
-System Memory (RAM) 4 GB
-System Memory (RAM) Expandable To 8 GB
-Type of Memory (RAM) DDR 2
-Hard Drive Type SATA (5400 rpm)
-Computer Hard Drive Size 320 GB
-Optical Drive Not included
-Direct-Disc Labeling No
-Digital Media Reader or Slots Yes, digital media card reader
-Graphics ATI Radeon 3200
-Video Memory 256 MB-1919 MB dynamically allocated shared
-TV Tuner No
-MPEG No
-Built-in Webcam Yes
-Modem Not included
-Networking Built in 10/100 Ethernet LAN (RJ 45 connector)
-Wireless Networking Wireless- B+G+N
-Bluetooth-Enabled No
-S-Video Outputs  None
-Speakers Internal
-PCMCIA Slots None
-USB 2.0 Ports 3
-IEEE 1394 FireWire Ports None
-Parallel Ports None
-Game Ports None
-Laptop Weight Ultraportable (5.5 lbs. or less)
-Battery Life Up to 6 hours
-Pointing Device Touchpad with enable/disable function
-HDMI Output Yes
-Blu-ray Player No
-Operating System Platform Windows
-Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
-Included Software Adobe Acrobat Reader
-ENERGY STAR Qualified Yes
-BBY Software Installer Yes